We are happy to announce a second bunch of Countdown Timer slides. After the success of our first Countdown Timer series, here's another set that contains longer countdowns (10 and 15 minutes each). Plus, we also include video clips in this series, if you want these countdown timers as video clips rather than slides. Additionally, this series includes 10 sample bonus presentations with ready-to-use countdown slides (just copy the first slide to your presentation).

Do you need to keep track of the time you spend while delivering your slides? What if you are in a situation where you must give your presentation within precisely 15 or 10 minutes, and then wrap up? In such a scenario, it becomes necessary that you keep an eye for the time. This tutorial explains how you can achieve this goal by adding a countdown timer within your presentation in PowerPoint 2010 using a ready-to-use video file.

Atoms make great graphics for explaining many concepts -- they can also be combined with other graphics as shown in this new Atom Graphics collection. And if you want to record narrations within PowerPoint for Mac, we show you how you can set your microphone. Adobe Presenter users can learn how to add presenters to your eLearning projects. And for PowerPoint 2013 (Windows) and 2011 (Mac) users, we show you how you can remove existing Sections within your presentations. PowerPoint 2010 for Windows users can explore animating slide objects while some audio or video clip is playing. And finally, for all versions of PowerPoint we look at differences in using pictures within Content and Picture placeholders.

Adobe Presenter provides various publish options -- and these work great if you have control over how your users will work with the eLearning content you create. However, there may be times when you do not have an idea about how and where the content will be used or distributed. In such scenarios, you can use the Package option that lets you publish the entire eLearning presentation along with all the assets and media within a single package.

Placeholders in PowerPoint make it easy for the users to insert any media file such as pictures, video, audio, etc. For Pictures, PowerPoint provides two placeholders Content and Picture. Although both placeholders enable you to insert pictures, there is a difference in the way that pictures behave when inserted within these placeholders. In this tutorial we'll explore the difference in between Content and Picture placeholders.

If you want to logically categorize your presentation slides so that they can be easily managed, then you should use the Sections option. You are not just limited to adding and renaming Sections -- you can also move slides from one Section to another, or change the order of Sections, or collapse / expand Sections etc. Other than these activities, you can also remove a Section, as explained in this tutorial.

Atoms represent activity at the most minute level, and are often used to suggest agility! In this set, we bring you not one or two, but ten variations of these atoms. These atom graphics can be used on their own, or also combined with other graphics such as a human head to create a larger concept or analogy!

Creating Sections in your presentation helps you to logically categorize your presentation slides so that you can easily manage them. Just adding and naming sections is not all that you can do. You can do more such as moving slides from one section to another, or changing the order of the sections, or collapsing / expanding sections etc. Other than these activities, you can also remove a section. This removing action itself has got few more options, as explained in this tutorial.

This time we bring you a new series of Irregular Shapes. Plus there is an exclusive conversation with Art Holden who discusses the new additions at Presenter Media, and the closure of Microsoft's Clip Art Gallery. We also have a series of Adobe Presenter tutorials. PowerPoint 2013 for Windows users can learn about moving slides between Sections, and how they can compare and merge presentations. PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users can learn about reusing slides via drag and drop, and also about moving slides between Sections - the latter tutorial is also available for PowerPoint 2010 for Windows users. And don't miss the new discussions and templates of this week!

Many applications, including PowerPoint allow you to record your voice using a connected microphone. In PowerPoint such recorded voice-overs work very well as slide narrations. However, if your connected microphone does not work using the recording options in PowerPoint or another application, then you may have to first find if the microphone hardware was detected or not by the Mac OS X. Also if detected, has it been selected for recording? In this tutorial, we will discover how you can take care of these concerns -- follow these steps to learn more.

Imagine that you are about to give a presentation that contains certain number of slides, and you’ve got 15 minutes in all to complete the whole presentation and wrap up every detail – all in those 15 minutes! Or maybe you have only 10 minutes? What will you do? In this tutorial, we will show you how you can create a countdown timer using a ready-to-use video file, right within PowerPoint 2013.

Let's imagine you have a 3 minute video or audio clip. Exactly after the clip has played for a minute, you want some text to appear super-imposed above the video clip, or just show on the slide while the audio clip is playing. All this while, the original audio or video clip should continue playing. It might seem difficult, but you can end up with these results quite easily using the Trigger Animation option. These Trigger animations typically happen as a result of a click on some other slide object -- but in PowerPoint 2010, you can now cause Trigger animations to also happen on media playback through a Bookmark.

Every presentation created has an intended presenter, who delivers the presentation. In Adobe Presenter you can assign a single presenter to all slides in a presentation, or assign different presenters to individual slides. You can not only assign presenter(s), but can also add detailed information about presenters such as the name, a photograph, their job title, a short biographical notes, a company logo, and also contact information. You don't have to fill in all fields. Adding a presenter will make your presentation more credible.

If you are working on a presentation with your clients, or even a co-worker -- then you might end up in a situation where you both did not work on the same copy, one after the other. Instead, you worked on two different copies. These copies contain changes done by you both -- some similar and some different. Now you need to compare and merge these copies into a single, cohesive file without losing anything at all! Yes, you can manually compare side by side in PowerPoint 2013 -- this option works great if there are very few changes. For anything more involved, you will want to use the Compare feature which was introduced in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows. This feature combines two presentations provided by you, and then shows you the differences between them. You can then decide which changes to include, or discard within the final version of your presentation.

To make your slides look more pleasing and aesthetic, you must add a personal touch. Using geometric shapes on your slides provides an organized look to your slides, but for that personal touch, your slides can use shapes such as these, that are irregular and organic. What if you could make all shape segments in your slides curved, slanted, and natural looking - as if they are hand-drawn? Won't that look more organic? If you agree, then you will certainly love these new irregular shapes for PowerPoint.

Your presentation slides become more easy to manage when you create and rename Sections. By using Sections in your presentations, you can logically categorize your presentation slides. If you want to move a particular slide or set of few slides from one Section to another, you can easily do so in PowerPoint 2011.